In Rainbows
by Tyger and Darkdracofire
Summary: AU. Twenty-three years in the life of. /Roxas, ensemble./


In Rainbows  
By Tyger.

He was born in the exact middle of the longest day of the year. Outside was lovely (it was always lovely in Destiny Islands) and warm, but the hospital was bright and clinical and cold.

When he was one, his mother bought a skirt with tiny mirrors sewn in. He followed the reflections as much as he could, with his entire being.  
"You like the pretty lights?" she asked.  
"Lai't," he agreed. It was his first word.

When he was two, he tried to climb up a lamp-stand. The resulting disaster put him in hospital for almost two weeks.  
He had a scar over his chest for the rest of his life.

When he was three, he learnt about how 'bright' could also be 'hot'. By the time his fingers healed, he'd decided fire wasn't for him.  
There were shinier things, that didn't hurt.

When he was four, his dad put glow-in-the-dark stars on his roof. He found it pretty hard to sleep for quite a while, because they were just the _best thing ever_.

When he was five, the doctors declared him colour-blind. Even then he knew it wasn't because he had a sight deficiency.

When he was six, his parents tried to insist on taking away his night-lights. He screamed and screamed and screamed, until they realised this was one battle they were never going to win. He never, ever went to sleep in the dark.

When he was seven, he took his mother's thickest, warmest quilt off her bed, and used it to block the light coming in from his windows. When she got home, the rainbows he made with the bits of glass he'd rescued from the bin and his ampharos night-light were completely ignored - apparently duct tape and embroidery didn't mix.  
When she found out where the glass was from, he was in even _more_ trouble.

When he was eight, she bought him some prisms and tiny light globes, and eventually gave in and made him proper blackout curtains.  
He began to set up a _system_.

When he was nine, he showed off his room to all his friends.  
And his friend's friends.

When he was ten, he stopped inviting people over. No one could ever see the really _cool_ bits, no matter _how_ obvious he made them.

When he was eleven, he was allowed to go to the little Island with Sora. Sora and his friends were kinda okay to hang around, even if they were older, and Naminé was about his age - but she kept making angry faces when he discovered how cool the shiny crystal-rocks up the back of one of the caves looked when he shone a torch on them, and spent the afternoon trying to pry some loose to take home.  
Girls, he decided, were really weird, and _that_ was why they had girl germs.

When he was twelve, he finally figured out the trick, a couple of days after he'd nicked his dad's chisel and found a decent rock. He ended up with cuts all over, fingers bruised from when he missed, and the boat had sunk dangerously low in the water with all the weight in his pockets, but his room looked really, really nice with all the quartz bits put in with the prisms.  
If he borrowed his dad's mini torch, and put it at the bottom of one, it _glowed._

When he was thirteen, he found a telescope buried in the back of an old box in one of the cupboards filled with junk. Honestly, all he'd been _going_ to do was take the lenses out so he could use them - it wasn't like anyone would've _noticed_, or at least not for _ages_ - but he'd been playing around with it first, and he'd seen Sora playing kissyfaces with Kairi _and_ Riku.  
The amount of trouble Sora got in was even worth the slap Naminé gave him when she thought he was just spreading a mean rumour.

When he was fourteen, his family left Destiny Islands. Sora kicked and screamed and turned sixteen before they left - then he figured out they couldn't _make_ him, packed up his things, and left the house without looking back. Riku's family was more than happy to look after him.  
Roxas stretched out in the back of the car, the way he'd never been able to before, and played with the crystal paopu Sora and his friends had given him that afternoon. It took threats to take away his prisms before he stopped bouncing rainbows off the rear-vision into his father's eyes.

When he was fifteen, he won the annual Struggle tournament in Twilight Town. He shared the prize with his friends, but kept the blue trophy-sphere for himself.  
It might've been frosted, so he couldn't make it _shine_, but if he put it like _so_ it lit up like the sky back home.

When he was sixteen, his parents really got stifling. They didn't want him running off like Sora, they said, and okay that was fair enough, but _really_. On the upside, they didn't mind him spending so much time fiddling with his room anymore.  
And, he learnt, the second-best thing about blackout curtains was that after a while people forgot there was a window there at all.

When he was seventeen, he started collecting other light sources. At Christmas, his parents bought him a small fibre-optic tree. He refused to take it down, even past New Years.  
Not long after that, they started going to raves. They were sort of the best thing ever.

When he was eighteen, he invited his friends home. The looked at the blackout curtains, the pin-lights and dozen or so lava lamps, the prisms and crystals hanging on strings; at the rainbow-lit walls and fairy-lights. No candles.  
"Dude, you're so fucking weird," said Hayner, and that was that.

When he was nineteen, his parents sent him to university. Twilight Town was too rural to have anything more than a branch campus, and they wanted at least _one_ of their sons to get a degree.  
His dorm-mates quickly learnt not to try and get into his room.

When he was twenty, he took a philosophy of science class. The ideas were thought-worthy, but the lecturer couldn't keep his attention for very long. He amused himself by turning the old guy's face different colours, between ultraviolet and light-x.  
He stopped when some guy across the room swore at him, rainbow harsh against his squinting eyes.

When he was twenty-one, he was randomly partnered up in his algebra lab.  
"You," said his partner, "you're that asshole from philo-sci last semester."  
"And you're that rainbow-hating bastard," he agreed.  
Despite all that, they quickly became friends.

When he was twenty-two, they started dating. His boyfriend's room was filled with candles and kerosene lanterns, with incense tucked away between things. The roof had gone black with soot.  
He peered curiously, but didn't ask. It made everything a whole lot more relaxed, and he was pretty sure it wasn't because of any 'girly' comments he might have made.

When he was twenty-three, he invited his still-boyfriend back to his apartment. It was his best room ever; glow-in-the-dark paint fuelled by rainbows, years worth of crystal-animals from Sora lit up with coloured LEDs, glass and crystal baubles hanging from the celling, his thirteen favourite lava lamps scattered around. He'd made these blackout curtains himself.  
After a long moment, Axel laughed. When he looked like he wasn't going to stop, Roxas bit him.

---  
For those of you who don't know: Amphaparos - electric-type pokemon, used in Gold, Silver and Crystal as a lighthouse-beacon.


End file.
